Assessment in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is often seen as a problematic issue by practitioners and researchers (Otto & Estrada 2020). Concerns include the weight that should be given to language performance, whether content teachers are qualified to assess language, and whether teacher assessment practices threaten equity by privileging those learners who have had more access to L2 learning opportunities. Another concern is the emphasis given to summative aspects of assessment, rather than classroom assessment for formative purposes, as noted by DeBoer and Leontjev (2020). These issues together point to the need for a knowledge base to underpin assessment literacy for CLIL. By assessment literacy, we mean the knowledge and skills required by teachers to coherently and appropriately design and implement assessment at classroom and school levels (Pastore & Andrade, 2019, pp. 134-35). For CLIL teachers, these skills involve understanding the aims of assessment when content and language learning are dual foci of instruction, the types of evidence to collect, how to provide appropriate feedback, and adjust teaching practices accordingly. Developing assessment literacy for CLIL teachers involves them being able to articulate the bases of achievement they invoke when assessing students' learning. In this contribution we use the conceptual toolkit of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), to explore the bases of achievement invoked by CLIL teachers when they assess students' work. LCT is a sociological framework for the exploration and improvement of all types of knowledge practices (Maton, 2014). The LCT dimension of Specialization explores the organizing principles of knowledge practices in terms of epistemic relations to knowledge and learning objects, and social relations to ways of knowing and knowers. Combined, these concepts generate different specialization codes. We use these concepts to examine the ways in which content and language teachers position different types of knowledge (language and content) and knowers in their assessment practices. We analyse recorded group discussions among content and English language teachers who assessed samples of CLIL students' work using comparative judgement, and then articulated the criteria they had used in their ratings. Results show that the teachers tended to focus on language forms and content knowledge separately and invoked "knower" attributes which potentially impacted their judgements. We identify implications for the knowledge base for assessment in CLIL as a prerequisite to promoting teachers' assessment literacy and argue that deeper understanding of the bases of achievement can contribute to reducing threats to equity in assessment in CLIL contexts.
References
deBoer, M., & Leontjev, D. (2020). Assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms: approaches and conceptualisations. Springer.
Maton, K. (2014). Knowledge and knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. Routledge.
Otto, A., & Estrada, J. L. (2019). Towards an understanding of CLIL assessment practices in a European context: Main assessment tools and the role of language in content subjects. CLIL. Journal of Innovation and Research in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education, 2(1), 31-42.
Pastore, S., & Andrade, H. L. (2019). Teacher assessment literacy: A three-dimensional model. Teaching and Teacher Education, 84, 128-138.
